White Roses
by Thecastlefan101
Summary: It started with a fever...and ended with a gravestone... Rated T for language


**White Rose: Purity, innocence, silence, secrecy, reverence.**

**A single Rose of any color means the ****_utmost devotion_**

* * *

She was fine. Everything was fine. He doesn't know when or how things started to fall apart, to dissipate into something unknown but it did. She was fine, they were all fine, everyone was fine and everyone was happy.

Alexis was an honor student at Columbia, Martha had finally gotten the role that would spring her career back to life, and Kate, his marvelous Kate, was going to marry him. Life was good life was great in fact. But maybe that's the problem life was _too _great. No way is one person allowed to have such happiness in his life that would be preposterous. Why should he of people in the world get to be happy? He's nothing special he's made no contributions to the world.

But he still doesn't understand _what happened_. The doctors say there was nothing that he could've done, that it was a one in a million chance. Why did he get three chances then? Why of all eight million people in New York did his family have to suffer? They try to tell him that it's for the better, that they're in a better place now. He doesn't want to hear that bullshit! He wants to know why, why did they leave him? Why did medicine fail? Why was there nothing he could've done? Why them?

His beautiful women all gone in a flash. Martha, Alexis, and Kate. Oh dear God why did _she _have to go? They were finally together she admitted her love for him and then the next moment she was gone. His heart, his aching fucking heart, bleeds from the inside out, seeping through his clothes, leaving a trail of unrequited love droplets behind. His love stains the floor, stains his clothes to signify just how deeply it hurts.

He hurts all over. When they first got sick, his mind was so blown at how fast it happened, how quickly it spread. Kate got sick first she thought it was the flu but no because not even a week later she couching up the blood. It sprang up from her throat, rising more with every inhale of air she took, depleting with every exhale. Her body temperature rose so high she felt like her soul was burning in hell, as if she was damned for finally allowing herself to be happy, to be free.

His family. What the hell is he going to do now? He can't go home because the memories there are too harsh, too fresh for him to face right now. He wouldn't be able to withstand the amount of pain that would overtake him. It would shut down his system, send his mind and body into overdrive and malfunction. He just can't face it yet, the absolute realization that they're gone, that he'll never see them again, that he's alone.

He tries to hope, hope that it just his imagination getting the best of him because he's caught up in a story. He tries to hope that the loneliness he faces every night isn't real that it's just his mind playing cruel jokes on him. Because if this is reality he won't be able to survive. Life without his mother, life without his daughter, life without his _wife_, isn't reality at all. Life without love is just an allusion. It's not real, there's nothing to grasp onto and cherish. You just breathe. So life without his family doesn't exist in his book.

When the sickness started to spread, he was so bewildered and overwhelmed. If only he had been stronger, if only he had stood his ground and been there for them when they needed him. Instead, he was a pathetic man who couldn't be around a little blood.

He still remembers Kate's face when she was begging him for air as she reached her hand out to him. He remembers the way she would cry from the pain in her chest whenever she laughed, talked and even breathed. He remembers her face when endless amounts of blood would claw its way up and out her throat, spraying onto the sheets, and causing endless amounts of pain. She needed help and she wanted saving but he didn't save her. Instead, he watched as she wasted away and away and away, until there was nothing left of her. Nothing but the ghost of body. Next his daughter, hers spread the quickest making her the first to go. She never led on that anything was wrong. Every morning she went to school and she would check in whenever she could so he never watched as his only child's life slowly left her body. Then his mother. She blamed her sickness on her alcohol consumption and refused to go to the hospital for treatment. She said it would all pass in good time and continued to live. But she was the first to give up letting the sickness carry her to her grave way to early.

By the time Alexis decided to receive treatment is was too late for her too. They say you have to catch it early and apparently waiting out the first two stages is too late, you have to treat it before the blood starts coming out.

Kate was a fighter. He's always known her to be strong and independent and that showed through the battles she had to face, all the wars that were waged on her heart and body, and so she could handle a little sickness. It wasn't going to get her. That's what she kept saying, that it wasn't going to get her. she was the first one to get it and the last to go. He didn't know what to do with himself knowing that she was next to go, that her death was inevitable, that he was truly going to be left with nothing and no one, that the love of his life was going to die and there was _nothing _he could do about it.

And now all he feels is pain. It eats at him like a disease, never ceasing, and all consuming. He's in agony all the time, as if someone has ripped apart his heart right before his eyes, as if his world is crumbling under his feet and he's glued to the to the floor, as if his soul as been shredded and torn from his body, as if his life has lost all meaning and colors are fading, dull and lifeless, gloomy and opaque, and again there's _nothing _he can do about it.

So he just sits and watches and waits for his time to come. It was contagious so it should, but it doesn't. It never came to take him to claim him, to take him to the other side, to the world unknown. It completely skipped over him and maybe that's what hurts the most, the fact that he has to sit and watch and wait as his life passes him by.

He'll never touch her again. He'll never get to the chance to touch her again. They were meant to be together. It was in their eyes, their banter, their body language. It was in the way they made love to one another. Slow and passionate and tender and just all around loving. He cherished her and never once took advantage of the fact that he had her, of the fact that even though they weren't' married yet, that she was his. He found solace in her arms, in her embrace. On bad days she made him laugh, she made him forget about the evil in the world with her smile, her laugh, her touch, and her body. She challenged and teased him for four years before they were together and he would do anything to have a minute of that time back, for one last moment with the love of his life, with his darling Kate. He wants one last kiss one last time to say goodbye because he wasn't with her when she died. When he woke up in the morning she was gone. And with her left his happiness.

He can't do it anymore; the pain is too unbearable, like he's being branded in his chest for being alive when his family is dead. So he goes home. As he's walking down the corridor, he can feel the tears welling up in his eyes and it's not until he gets to the door that he allows one to fall down his cheeks. Hazmats gave him the all clear to go home but he never went. That was six months ago and the tape is still on the door.

When he goes inside he immediately falls to his knees and sobs. There are so many pictures and memories and smells that remind him so much, of how happy he use to be. Life is so fragile. And his is completely shattered. He's still to raw to be here, to see his life, stuck, and frozen in time. Everything is the way he left it but nothing is the same. He needs his two redheads walking around and his fiancé curled up in the couch with a book. He needs to hear their laughter, he needs _them!_

And so he cries to release the pain he cries to have coherent thought he cries because he feels so alone in the world he cries because he just can't take the aching of his heart. It needs to end he wants to be able to feel something other than emptiness and loneliness and heartache. He wants to be free of the sorrowful chains that bind him.

And so he showers and dresses in a suit then he grabs Kate's black box from his dresser before he leaves. He buys three white roses: one for each of his girls and for the first time since they died he smiles at the thought of him being a black rose. Just of ghost of a man that use to be.

He's standing in front of their graves stones reading the inscriptions. Such little words to describe three amazing people, three extraordinary people, and he can't help but wonder what his will say. What a pathetic man? What a weak man? He clearly won't be missed since his family lies before him, six feet under. He lays down each white rose on their graves before unwrapping the item from the black box. More tears fall as he takes a deep breath before he takes it out, cocks it, and presses it to his temple.

And then he paints the roses red.


End file.
